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Friday, August 8, 2014

Friday Finish with Sara Lawson | My Jungle Ave. quilt

I was incredibly excited when I heard that my friend Sara Lawson was releasing a fabric line with Art Gallery Fabrics, and even more excited when I got to work with a fat quarter bundle of her line, Jungle Ave.

Jungle Ave is a fun, bright collection of prints and blenders on Art Gallery's signature super-soft cotton. I really enjoyed reading about Sara's inspiration on her blog:

My collection is called Jungle Ave., and it is inspired by city living. I live in Chicago, and even though it is a metropolitan city, I was curious to explore the softer side of the city. I thought about people living in apartments or in highrises, and how they could still keep potted plants on their balcony or have small patches of soil to plant vegetables. I combined the floral elements of these ideas with the images of asphalt and riding the subway (here in Chicago, it’s the elevated train, or ‘el’). The images of the elephants come in because I wanted to play with the idea of an ‘urban jungle’; the elephants perfectly marry the floral idea with the grittier images of the city, such as the black polka dot print or the fuchsia text print.

I held on to the fabric for a long time, mulling over what to make with it. Ultimately, I decided on one of my most favorite go-to patterns for showing off prints and color (free pattern here from American Patchwork & Quilting!) For the dividing bars, I found the PERFECT shade of Moda Grunge that not only matches the green within Sara's prints, but also has tints of aqua and pink that also match perfectly. It seems like this particular shade of Grunge was custom-made for Jungle Ave.